RECURRENT

By Darla Mottram

What if the connection, at the root of our existence, is in fact a connection and a severance? How does a sense of self form in relation to connections that hold within them such intensive ruptures and slides? How might one redefine family in such a way that severance can live with, not against, the formation of emotional conn

• Language: English
• Publisher: Querencia Press, LLC
• Release date: May 24, 2024
• ISBN: 9798869341419

Darla Mottram

Darla Mottram (they/she) is a poet, writer, and visual artist based in Portland, Oregon. They created and ran Gaze, an online literary journal, from 2018-2021. RECURRENT is their first book.

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RECURRENT

Darla Mottram

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Querencia Press – Chicago IL

Q AN IMPRINT OF QUERENCIA PRESS

© Copyright 2024

Darla Mottram

All Rights Reserved

No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without written permission.

No paragraph of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted save with the written permission of the author.

Any person who commits any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

ISBN 978 1 959118 98 5

www.querenciapress.com

First Published in 2024

Querencia Press, LLC

Chicago IL

Printed & Bound in the United States of America

ADVANCE PRAISE FOR RECURRENT

In RECURRENT, Darla Mottram tells a story of familial abandonment, addiction, sexual abuse, violence, loss, and generational influence through her lyrical poetry, a handful of black-and-white family photographs, notes from foster-care workers, and the full text of a letter that Mottram, age seven, wrote to her mother, whereabouts unknown, which was never delivered. Calling RECURRENT a story is imprecise, but suggests the book's central struggles with time, loss, and meaning-making. Mottram explicitly resists many of the tropes associated with mourning, maintaining that I want to / honor / what's broken / no: silver linings, phoenix rising / from ashes, lemons turned lemonade / no recovery narrative / the poem fails / to make understandable  / what isn't—I don't want to fix it / I just want to hold it. This book grabbed me: out of trauma and loneliness, Mottram has created a work of insight, beauty, and humanity.

—Michele Glazer, author of Fretwork and OnTact, and the Made Up World

What if the connection, at the root of our existence, is in fact a connection and a severance? How does a sense of self form in relation to connections that hold within them such intensive ruptures and slides? How might one redefine family in such a way that severance can live with, not against, the formation of emotional connection? Darla Mottram's extraordinary first book of poems—RECURRENT—explores these questions with such generosity and vulnerability. Verse, snapshots with lyric captions, documents (letters, notations from medical records, reports of Children's Services Division), poems in prose, poems as visual fields, dreams, memories, anaphoras, among so much more—this livid variety along with the book's length brings to mind pillowy poetry books by Bernadette Mayer and Alice Notley. In RECURRENT, the speakers come to find themselves—through neglect and abandonment, passage through the foster system, and then extended-family adoption—seeking connection and autonomous selves-hood. By the book's end, the reader will come to understand that recurrence is the rhythm of life we must not only accept but immerse ourselves in. RECURRENT is a truly brilliant first book and signals amazing things to come from Mottram.

—Jay Ponteri, author of Someone Told Me and Wedlocked

I don’t want to fix it / I just want to hold it, Darla Mottram writes in RECURRENT. If a person can do this, can offer the materials of their life tous, in this way (photographs, reports, documents, poems, dreams,nightmares, truths ... no end or beginning to the list), if it can beheld and not fixed (as it was never broken or in need of fixing),then what?I read this book and sit back in awe at this question, living in theroom with me.

—Emily Kendal Frey, author of Lovability and Sorrow Arrow

to those torn too soon from themselves—

C O N T E N T S

TIMELINE

RECURRING NIGHTMARE

I REMEMBER

DIRTY

SPLIT

RECURRING NIGHTMARE

MUTUALLY EXCLUSIVE

FIRST LOVE

RECURRING NIGHTMARE

LUNGFISH

GOTCHA

OUROBOROS

MY FAMILY TREE

SONG

A PATTERN MUST BE ESTABLISHED FOR VARIATION TO OCCUR

IN LOCO PARENTIS

IN SOUTH DAKOTA I SPENT HOURS TOURING THE THIRD LONGEST CAVE IN THE WORLD

RECURRING NIGHTMARE

CERTIFICATE OF IRREVOCABILITY

BIRTH

THE TROUBLE WITH BIRDS

APPLE FALLS FROM TREE

SEVERING TIES

MATRYOSHKA

VESPERS

THE GOOSE

RECURRING NIGHTMARE

LIKE MOTHER LIKE DAUGHTER

A PICTURE GOES IN SEARCH OF ITS FRAME

PRAXIS

PRECIOUS

SELVES

RECURRING NIGHTMARE

LETTING IN THE WOLVES

THE END

DON YOUR WINTER CLOTHES

HOLDING ON

WHEN WE FINALLY GET IT

RECURRING NIGHTMARE

LEAVENING

THE POEM FAILS

STIPULATIONS

AFTER DINNER

COMING OF AGE

WHO IS ALLOWED TO MOURN WHOIS ALLOWED TO BE MOURNED

MYTHOLOGY

PROPHECY

POEM OF WANING CHILDHOOD

RECURRING NIGHTMARE

HELLBENT

AN EXTRATERRESTRIAL SLEEPS IN MY CLOSET

RECURRING DREAM

ALMOST AN EFFULGENCE

RECURRENT

BELIEF SYSTEM

PICTURES

I WAS WATCHING THE OSPREY

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

NOTES

THANKS

TIMELINE

I was born in